One True Loves
Directed by Andy Fickman
Written by Taylor Jenkins Reid and Alex J. Reid
Starring Phillipa Soo, Simu Liu, and Luke Bracey
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour and 40 minutes
In theaters April 7, Digital on April 14, On Demand on April 28

by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer

I am always down for a good romcom. Part of that is fulfilling my husbandly duty of paying back my wife for sitting through the more arduous cinema I subject her to, but part of it is that deep down in a soft boy who likes an easy little love story. This isn’t even me copping out by saying my favorite romcoms are Say Anything and Annie Hall or modern, R-Rated comedy fare like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Five Year Engagement (though I love all of those movies). Recent stuff like Crazy Rich Asians and Always Be My Maybe were borderline year end list contenders not because I had Stockholm Syndrome via trying to make the best of a bad movie-watching situation but because those movies are legitimately funny and full of heart and at the end of the day that’s really all I want.

So I jumped at the opportunity to check out another Asian-American led romcom because the track record for those has been sublime of late. With Tony nominated Phillipa Soo (Hamilton) in the lead and Canada’s sweetheart Simu Liu (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) on board this one seemed like it would be enjoyable even with its soapy plot. In One True Loves, Emma (Soo) marries the man of her dreams, Jesse (Luke Bracey). When Jesse is lost at sea on a photography expedition, Emma mourns for not nearly enough time before reconnecting with her high school bestie Sam (Liu) and they are soon after engaged. When Jesse is rescued from a desert island where he was going full Tom Hanks in Castaway, Emma must choose between the two dreamboats.

Is this melodramatic romance novel material? Sure, but with the talent on board this should have been fine. Hallmark Movie-adjacent, sure, but I was not prepared for the clinic of ineptitude this movie puts on. I think of myself as a pretty forgiving movie watcher. I get no pleasure dragging a movie through the mud and try to find the little glimmers of joy in everything. Maybe that’s because I’ll turn a movie or show off after ten minutes if it seems like it’s not worth my time, and maybe that’s why One True Loves was the most excruciating movie watching experience I’ve had in recent memory.

Ok, so when I said I take no pleasure from dragging movies, that was a blatant lie. Or at the very least I should have included the caveat that some movies deserve to be dragged for not being worth the celluloid they’re printed on. Movies like Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, for instance, is a movie that deserves to be dragged and a movie I dragged in the pages of Moviejawn many years back, via an incredibly elaborate comic that led to an incredibly dumb punchline. So you can imagine the feeling I had of the universe paying me back for that when I found out Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 director Andy Fickman was responsible for One True Loves. A movie that, in all honesty, could have been made by a 20 year old film student. In fact, I have seen student films more competently made than One True Loves and that is not hyperbole. 

Fickman is an easy punching bag for this movie’s flaws, and while he is absolutely the biggest reason why this is unwatchable, to give him sole credit wouldn’t be fair. For one, the editing is so disjointed I wondered if I was watching a rough cut. It’s truly mind boggling the way this movie jumps around. Part of that is the terrible script, and I felt sorry for author Taylor Jenkins Reid until I realized she co-wrote the script with her husband. This is an easy story to tell. You read the synopsis up there. And yet the way this thing fails to even employ basic storytelling logic is pure malpractice. For instance, you would think the script would set up Jesse and Sam as equally equipped suitors, but the first ⅔ of the movie shows Jesse as the obvious choice for Emma’s affections while Sam is depicted as an also ran. 

Maybe I’m just infuriated to see Simu Liu wasted like this, but for a premise built on a pretty substantial conflict, there is no conflict in this movie until the last 30 minutes. I mean you don’t even know what the hell happened to her husband until an hour into the movie. It’s basic information you need to know to drive the narrative, and the script treats this story like it’s some ambiguous art film where the point is to feel lost. This is a romcom, and there is no space for that kind of artsy nonsense here. Not that this movie has any ambition, it was directed by the guy who made Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and directed 48 episodes of Kevin Can Wait after all. People can change. Look at Craig Mazin, who went from writing and directing Superhero Movie to showrunning Chernobyl and The Last of Us. But Fickman seems to be the guy they hire when it straight-up just doesn’t matter if a thing is good or not. 

If I feel bad for anyone though it’s this poor cast, who all end up worse for wear after struggling through this script. The dialogue makes you embarrassed for everyone having to deliver it. Just cliche on top of cliche to the point where I felt like I was watching one of those fake parody movies from Everything Everywhere All at Once. Hallmark wouldn’t even sully their good name with something this bad. It’s just so rare that you watch a movie that is bad all the way down, from the broadest strokes to the smallest details.